A cushion may be used for a headrest and an armrest equipped in an automobile. Such a cushion is composed of a skin layer formed in a bag shape and an inner body molded in a desired three-dimensional shape, and the inner body is inserted in and covered with the skin layer. The inner body is formed of filler such as urethane chips, and such an inner body can be obtained by passing steam through a mixture of urethane chips and a water reactive urethane binder to adhere those chips to each other.
However, a surface of such an inner body is not smooth, and a fraction of the inner body is easily separated from its surface even though the chips are firmly adhered to each other by the binder. Thus, it is not easy to cover the inner body with the skin layer.
In addition, since the surface of the inner body is not smooth as described above, it takes a along time for covering the inner body with the skin layer, and this makes the productivity worse. Also, even though such an inner body is covered with the skin layer, the skin layer is shifted relative to the inner body so that a wrinkle is produced on the surface of the skin layer and a seam of the skin layer is undesirably curved, and thus, as another problem, this makes its quality worse.
Moreover, if the inner body has a depression part, it is required to carry out a special treatment between the depression part formed on the inner body and the corresponding part of the skin layer to adhere therebetween. Such a special treatment is carried out using adhesive and the like. However, since a surface to be treated is inside the skin layer, such a treatment is difficult to carry out.
The surface-smoothness and the separation of a fraction of the inner body both become considerably worse, as the filler such as chips used for the inner body is harder. Thus, in the prior art, soft foamed urethane chips are used as the filler.
In productive steps of a seat and accessories equipped in an automobile, a large amount of waste such as foamed urethane chips and a piece of the skin layer is produced. Even though it is considered to recycle such waste, it is difficult to use the waste as filler used for the inner body due to the reasons described above.
Thus, the present invention is made to solve the above problems, and its object is to provide a padded body (typically used for a headrest and an armrest equipped in an automobile) composed of a skin layer formed in a bag shape and filler made of a granular or fragmental material such as chips padded into the skin layer and its manufacturing method, and according to the present invention, the padded body can be easily formed by padding the filler into the skin layer and its quality is stably maintained even though any filler having any hardness is used.
Another object of the present invention is to provide the padded body described above and its manufacturing method wherein the skin layer can be adhered to the filler padded into it so as not to separate the skin layer from a mass of the filler padded into it even though the padded body has a depression part.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a padding and/or molding container for carrying out the method according to the present invention.